


Isolation

by Merixcil



Series: Whumptober 2019 [7]
Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 08:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25467472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: In his quest to get everything ready for Lister's emergence from Stasis, Holly brings Rimmer back rather sooner than strictly necessary
Relationships: Holly & Arnold Rimmer
Series: Whumptober 2019 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838356
Kudos: 2





	Isolation

Real space clicked on like a lightbulb, and wouldn’t you know it but everything was just the same as it had been before. Nothing but rotten luck for him, through and through. It had been this way since-

Rimmer blinked, and was immediately struck by the notion that he didn’t really need to. He was standing on the bridge, fully dressed and back straight for active duty, yet he felt like he’d just woken up from an extended nap. 

The bridge, definitely Red Dwarf, so that hadn’t been a fever dream. The last thing he could remember was something about a plate. Plates in the canteen? Certainly the staff they employed on this rust bucket didn’t do nearly enough to keep the place in shape. He must have been complaining, that sounded like him. 

First an ominous swelling rumble, then with a pop Rimmer's ears came back online. He stumbled backwards, immediately floored by the shrill, persistent bleeping spooling off the instruments surrounding him. One of the flight control screens showed a very ominous DANGER sign printed in large red letters and if the off kilter chairs and misplaced pens were anything to go by it looked as if the command deck had been abandoned in a hurry. 

“Someone shut that thing up!” Rimmer snapped. 

No one came running. No one at all. He looked around and found himself perfectly alone in the middle of a crisis. The door to the captain’s office was still pushed open, revealing the name plate Hollister always kept front and centre as if anyone was about to forget who might be employing them all the way out in space. 

Panic gripped Rimmer the same way it had when, at the tender age of seven, he had jumped into the school swimming pool and promptly lost his trunks. Jokes about his endowment had followed him all the way to the Space Corps Academy. Before he could fully consider the implications of his actions, his legs went into full panic mode and started to carry him out of the bridge and down the corridor towards the sleeping quarters. Which he had surmised, incorrectly, would be better insulated from all manner of disaster on account of the need to protect human life. 

The Jupiter Mining Corporation held the lives of its employees in extremely low regard, to the extent that several of their ships which had been reported lost in deep space had, in fact, exploded, and the Chairs of the board would find themselves liable for more than ten thousand counts of murder some twenty years in the future when they failed to materialise. 

By the time Rimmer had run half a mile (in just under three minutes) he was out of breath and unable to escape the shrill beeping that seemed to be emanating from every orifice of this blasted ship. And in that time he hadn’t encountered a single soul. 

“Computer!” He snapped, leaning forward on his knees. No, wrong, the computer had a name. Something beginning with H. Harold? Hollandaise?

“Holly!”

“Alright Arnold?” The nearest screen maintained it’s infernal beeping but it replaced it’s nebulous warning of DANGER with the disembodied head of a man mathematically designed to be as non-threatening as possible, as most computer faces were. There was quite some debate, in fact, between Microsoft and Apple as to who had managed to create a more adequate face for the job. 

The JMC ran on a Limewire operating system that frequently deposited viruses into all crew members’ belongings every time a senior officer downloaded pornography from a less than trustworthy source. 

“No, I’m not alright!” Rimmer spat. “Something very weird is going on here and you need to fix it.”

“Oh yeah?” Holly’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s that?”

“Well I think it might have something to do with the fact that I failed to fix the drive plate due to serious error on behalf of a junior officer that led to him being thrown in stasis and so, rendered unable to assist me with my important routine tasks.” Rimmer said. Then he stopped. Like a key sliding into a lock, his memory, which had been patchy at best a few seconds earlier, now appeared to be completely restored. “Holly, I think I died?”

“Yeah.” Holly smiled mildly. “That’s about right. Any questions?”

“Yes! Many questions!” Rimmer squawked. “Let’s start with: How the hell can I be standing here right now if I’m dead?”

“Well you’re a hologram, aren’t you?”

“I am?”

“Yes, Arnold.”

Rimmer stared in alarm at his very real, very physical looking hands and swiped at the monitor. He sunk right through it up to his elbow, didn’t even feel a thing. Patting himself down, he could feel the scratchy beige linen of his work clothes like they had been filtered through several layers of muddy water. Still there, but much less so than they should have been. 

“Dead.” Rimmer repeated, miserably. 

“Yes, Arnold. You and most of the rest of the crew.”

“The rest of the crew?” Rimmer felt faint. he couldn’t even lean against the wall for support in this trying time. 

“Well,” Holly’s head jerked like he might have shrugged if he had shoulders. “The drive plate’s pretty important, when you think about it. Essential component of the drive. Hard for humans to keep living without one.”

Har de fucking har. Rimmer glared daggers at Holly. “Way to rub it in, number brain.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that the ones and zeroes that comprise my experience of the world are incredibly valuable to me. You should know better than to talk about a fellow inorganic life form like that.” Holly sniffed. “Now if you don’t mind, I have some very important work to be doing behind the scenes.”

“Wait!” Rimmer held out his hands and was struck by how totally useless the gesture was. What was he going to do, wave Holly to death? “If the whole crew is dead, why am I here as a hologram? Shouldn’t you have brought back the captain or one of the navigation officers?”

Holding his breath, Rimmer waited to be told what he had wanted to hear for his entire life. That he was so important he had been chosen, out of all humanity, to carry on the torch. His parents would have a spot of trouble looking down their noses at him then.

“Well, Arnold. Turns out that a malfunctioning drive plate produces an awful lot of deadly radiation, which wiped out almost every member of the crew.”

“Almost?” Rimmer raised an eyebrow. He hoped that whoever was left, McGruder was amongst them. This was the perfect opportunity for her to take back all those nasty things she had said the day after they had made glorious love. 

If he was lucky, Rimmer figured, he might even get to make glorious love again. Then he remembered that he was a hologram and his penis would have to content itself with imagined trysts for as long as that was the case

“Crew member David Lister was serving time without pay, in stasis, and so was shielded from the blast.” Holly continued. Rimmer felt the air knocked out of him. “In the intervening two million, nine hundred thousand, six million and thirty eight years, the background radiation has faded from roast your testicles to heavy sunburn, and I predict that within four thousand years it will be safe to release Lister and proceed on course as dictated by him.”

“By Lister?” Rimmer spluttered. “Dave Lister? A man with more dreadlocks than braincells?”

“Well, he is the last surviving crew member.”

“But I’m here! And I’m his superior officer. So what does it matter what that goit thinks is good sense?”

“As far as I’m concerned, the total output of running this ship must be dedicated solely to preserving the life of it’s last remaining crew member.” Holly replied, like this was obvious. “And I hate to break it to you, Arn, but livings outrank the dead every step of the way up the chain of command.”

Rimmer blinked, furious at Holly’s goited, hovering head. What was the point of bringing him back just to tell him that he’d been demoted below a man who thought that kittens could survive on water alone?

What was the point on bringing him back at all? 

“Hang on!” Rimmer held up a finger, just as Holly was threatening to vanish back into the inner workings of the system. “If Lister isn’t going to be ready to blow for another four thousand years, why bring me back now?” And why bring back me, he didn’t ask, suddenly suspicious that his presence here was a fluke of Holly’s decaying wiring and unwilling to test that theory anytime soon. 

“See, we gotta get you re-acclimatised to the place, Arnold. Work out which systems we can do without to keen you running smoothly.” Holly explained. “As long as the radiation’s still fading, things keep jumping around and switching place. We gotta make sure you’re settled in nicely for when Lister gets back.”

If he had blood left to leave his face, Rimmer would have felt himself go white. "Four thousand years? You expect me to float around this ship for four thousand years while the alarm keeps screaming and with no one but you for company?”

“Not entirely.” Holly conceded. “It’s complex work, keeping a ship like this moving while safely venting left over radioactive material. I’m gonna finish up this little intro then get back to work. You won’t see me till right before I let Dave out.”

“What?” Rimmer shrieked. But it was too late. The screen flickered black for an instant, then started up flashing it’s DANGER sign. 

Rimmer stared, disbelieving at the space where Holly’s head had been just a second before. He reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead but it didn’t quite feel wet enough, didn’t quite feel like his skin. 

“Smeg.” Rimmer muttered to himself, staring down the barrel of four thousand years spent making conversation with the radiation alarm. “Smegging, smegging, smeg.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'whumptober' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have


End file.
